No witnesses

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE 9 PM: The vote is over, with no surprises on the GOP side. Romney and Collins voted for more witnesses, as did all the Democrats. I’m a little bit surprised – just a little bit – that not a single Democrat in a red state decided to go with the majority and close off witnesses, since this would have helped those Democrats maintain their support in those states and it wouldn’t have changed the outcome one iota. But the Democrats were apparently very stern on party discipline.]

I don’t want to count unhatched chickens, but if no senator goes back on his or her word, the impeachment trial should be wrapping up very very soon, because Senator Murkowski of Alaska has joined Lamar Alexander and announced she plans to vote “no” on witnesses.

I can think of some Democrat senators (Warren, Sanders, Klobuchar, Bennett) who must be breathing sighs of relief. They get to vote for witnesses but not have to actually sit there and endure listening to them while their 2020 opponents race around the country campaigning.

And now that it no longer matters all that much what they do, perhaps a few other Democrats might vote against witnesses in an attempt to protect their own political futures in states that voted for Trump. Susan Collins will apparently do something similar on the opposite side: in her case, vote for witnesses, hoping that the GOP voters in her state give her a pass on it because they have no viable alternative candidate, while simultaneously hoping that her vote will placate enough moderate Democrats in her state that they will choose her again over the Democrat.

As for Romney, he seems to believe he’s the star of his own morality play. Far more people on the right, however, consider him the villain of his own revenge play (that is, of course, assuming he votes for witnesses). If Romney tries to run for re-election when his term is up in 2024, I assume he will be primaried by a more conservative candidate, probably successfully.

And as for Murkowski, I agree with Allahpundit here:

What would Murkowski have gained by forcing a 50/50 deadlock that would have left John Roberts and McConnell scratching their heads about how to resolve it? By voting this way [no to witnesses], she earns a favor from Trump and Cocaine Mitch and gives Trump fans back in Alaska a reason to forgive her the next time she votes no in a Kavanaugh-magnitude situation.

Will they forgive her? I think it depends on who may try to primary her next time.

The bottom line is that Murkowski and Romney are in red states, so the election of more conservative senators from those states is possible. In Collins’ case, however, she is almost certainly about as conservative as it could ever get, and the state could easily go entirely blue if she is challenged by someone more conservative for the GOP nomination.

However, I’m under no illusion that the drive to impeach Trump, and the attacks on him – as well as clandestine operations against him by the self-styled “Resistance” – are over. They will continue, probably unabated and perhaps even with increased vigor (if such a thing be possible). The Democrats and the “deep state” are desperate to be rid of him, their hatred is a thing of great force, and they believe that the ends justify the means.

By refusing to read the name of the whistleblower during the impeachment trial…

The New Neo Posted on by

…didn’t John Roberts inadvertently reveal that this is indeed the whistleblower?:

“It’s very important whether or not a group of Democratic activists, part of the Obama-Biden administration were working together for years looking for an opportunity to impeach the president,” Paul explained. He blamed Roberts and the Senate for “selective belief in protecting the whistleblower statute … nobody says they know who the person is. But anybody you say might be all of a sudden is protected from being part of the debate.”

Roberts communicated to senators on Tuesday that he would not read questions that outed the alleged whistleblower, prompting Paul to complain afterward.

Everyone who follows the news at all closely knows the whistleblower’s supposed identity: Eric Ciaramella. It’s not any kind of secret at all. And Rand Paul has said that was the person named in his question.

What a stupid charade – but it’s one that plays quite nicely into Schiff’s hands.

And by the way, it would be different if this was a whistleblower whose identity is protected by statute. It is not.

Mis-educating the young, on purpose

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s otherwise known as the indoctrination of impressionable children – and the left is hard at work at this task, and has been for many many decades. But in recent years it’s reached a very critical mass.

I linked to this article in a previous post today. But now I’m giving it a post of its own, for emphasis.

I’ve written several times before about the 1619 Project of the NY Times, as well as the plan of its creators to make it part of the school curriculum. And yes, that’s what’s happening, exactly as contemplated.

The voices of historians – even historians somewhat to the left – criticizing the “facts” in the 1619 Project are just so much hot air at this point, because the “educators” who make the decisions couldn’t care less what historians think:

Since its publication in August, the 1619 Project has been adopted in more than 3,500 classrooms in all 50 states, according to the 2019 annual report of the Pulitzer Center, which has partnered with the Times on the project. Five school systems, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., have adopted it district-wide. It is mostly being used as supplemental, optional classroom teaching material. By and large, school systems are adopting the project by administrative fiat, not through a public textbook review process…

Gordon Wood, a leading historian of the American Revolution and emeritus professor at Brown University, told RealClearInvestigations the Times material “is full of falsehoods and distortions.” In its current form, without corrections, which the Times has declined to run, the only way to use it in the classroom, he said, would be “as a way of showing how history can be distorted and perverted.”…

Defenders of ethnic studies argue the movement is a necessary corrective to a whitewashed version of history. But critics denounce it as propaganda used to indoctrinate students. And they’re troubled by the endorsement of racial and identity-based histories by prestigious institutions such as the New York Times and publicly funded schools.

The project’s leader, Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, has declared since the magazine’s publication that her goal “is that there’ll be a reparations bill passed” – meaning financial reparations for slavery and subsequent racial discrimination.

If you have young children or grandchildren – or even if you don’t – try to find out whether this is what they’re learning. If it is, please try your best to fight it. I’ve looked (rather quickly, just now) to see whether there’s an organized group opposing this. I can’t locate one, but if anyone has any information or suggestions, please comment below.

Oh, and if anyone says the NY Times doesn’t have much influence anymore, think again. Its influence is hardly limited to articles in a newspaper.

Dershowitz makes a great point

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Something is wrong with the YouTube videos of this show, and therefore this clip won’t play. I will be busy for quite some time today and unable to try to fix it till tonight. Sorry about that, but perhaps it will spontaneously heal in the meantime.]

About the shifting politics-dependent opinions of legal so-called scholars:

NOTE: And by the way, Dershowitz is a brave man. The left hates him already as a betrayer, and for his role in defending the Constitution in the Trump trial they will try even harder to destroy him.

Those dumb Trump supporters…

The New Neo Posted on by

…did pretty well on a test of verbal and science ability compared with Clinton supporters. The test is called the GSS:

We don’t have great data on the intelligence of Trump supporters, but the best available is in the 2018 General Social Survey. For those unfamiliar with the GSS, it is usually regarded as the leading omnibus academic survey in the US; it usually achieves response rates about 10 to 20 times higher than the typical public opinion poll.

You can read the results at the link; many were not statistically significant, but some were.

But that’s not what really caught my eye. What riveted me was this:

Indeed, less than half of 2016 Clinton supporters (49.6%) are able to answer correctly both of two related questions: whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth (EARTHSUN) and whether that takes a day, a month, or a year (SOLARREV). Remember these two questions are multiple choice! You would have a 50-50 chance of guessing correctly on the first part: whether the earth goes around the sun or vice versa. Sadly, the general public didn’t do hugely better than Clinton supporters, with only 57.1% (compared to 49.6%) knowing that the earth goes around the sun and that it takes a year to do so.

This is the sort of basic knowledge usually learned in the early years of grade school and then refined and repeated later on. If approximately half the public doesn’t know the answers, that indicates they know barely anything about the world around them.

At this point, the Republican/Democrat split is of interest because part of that ignorance apparently involves the arrogance and condescension of those on the left about those on the right (see this, for example). But the larger question is: what hope do we have if so much of the public is this deeply ignorant?

The remedy, of course, is back to basics in education. But since the left has almost completely taken over the function of educating our children, and would much rather feed them a diet of lies that advance the leftist narrative than bother with truth, it is hard to see how that tide can be turned.

[NOTE: And I don’t believe the answers can be explained by the phenomenon of flat-earthers, because they’re just not numerous enough to account for the results.]

Another one bites the dusts: Windows 7

The New Neo Posted on by

We had a long love affair. But now Windows 7 is leaving me, although not of its own free will. I got this in an email today:

As of January 14th, 2020, Microsoft, the developer of the Windows 7 operating system, announced that additional security updates and technical support will no longer be available for home users of Windows 7. While the operating system is over a decade old, it is estimated to still run on a quarter of all PCs worldwide. Microsoft is encouraging all users still on Windows 7 to upgrade to their latest operating system, Windows 10, in order to continue to receive security and functional updates.

I hate Windows 10.

It’s always the same. First the “suggest” you change. Then they force you to change. And although every now and then the change turns out to be for the better, it’s usually not.

Gorsuch does not ♥ nationwide injunctions from district judges

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a good discussion of a recent SCOTUS decision, and in particular some remarks by Justice Gorsuch in a concurring opinion. The Court voted 5-4 to lift a nationwide injunction placed by a district court judge on Trump’s new rule preventing people who are on the public dole (or likely to be) from getting green cards:

District court judges — the lowest judges in the federal system, ruling alone, rather than part of a panel of judges, from the bench — have, as usual, claimed to have the power to issue nationwide or even “universal” or indeed “cosmic” injunctions against enforcement of the rule.

Neil Gorsuch concurred with the judgement setting aside this claimed “universal” injunction, and then — finally! — ripped the Hawaiian judges presuming the authority to dictate the entire nation’s laws from their dinky little bench.

Gorsuch wrote, among other things:

It has become increasingly apparent that this Court must, at some point, confront these important objections to this increasingly widespread practice. As the brief and furious history of the regulation before us illustrates, the routine issuance of universal injunctions is patently unworkable, sowing chaos for litigants, the government, courts, and all those affected by these conflicting decisions.

Rather than spending their time methodically developing arguments and evidence in cases limited to the parties at hand, both sides have been forced to rush from one preliminary injunction hearing to another, leaping from one emergency stay application to the next, each with potentially nationwide stakes, and all based on expedited briefing and little opportunity for the adversarial testing of evidence.

This is not normal. Universal injunctions have little basis in traditional equitable practice. [Citation omitted.] Their use has proliferated only in very recent years.

That is so obvious that one would think it would have been stated long before this. But we’ve been waiting for a long time, while the practice continued apace.

Nor will this resolve it for good; as Gorsuch says, the Court must rule definitively on the issue. This is just the warmup act.

And the decision should have been 9-0. But it wasn’t.

Impeachment trial: it’s possible…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that it won’t just be a few RINO Republicans who defect from the party line on calling more witnesses. The Democrats may harbor some defectors as well: Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey are saying they are contemplating voting against calling more witnesses, or at the very least they might support calling witnesses for both sides.

Usually these rumors come to nothing, though, and it’s the Republicans who defect while the Democrats stick together. But one never knows. This is an unusual situation, and these Democrats know that the public has tired of this mess.

I certainly know that I’ve tired of this mess. But what’s happening is both repulsive and important.

If you want to follow more closely, you can watch it live here:

The peace deal: falling on deaf ears

The New Neo Posted on by

At this point, unfortunately, Israel/Palestine peace plans are not enormous news for the simple reason that there’s no reason to believe that any such plan, however brilliant, could succeed.

But Trump has tried to devise one, as have many presidents before him:

The Jerusalem Post summarized the main of the deal:

“The Trump plan would allow Israel to retain about 20% of the West Bank. Israel would be called upon to cede some land in the south near Egypt’s border with Gaza. The plan also leaves open the possibility that Israel could cede the Triangle — three Arab cities in the Galilee — to a future Palestinian state, subject to negotiations between the parties.”

Israel will be allowed to keep 15 communities as “enclaves” within the future Palestinian state. Israel would be responsible for their security.

Under the plan there could be a Palestinian state in four years if the Palestinians meet certain conditions. The total area of the state would encompass about 70% of the West Bank, including what is termed Areas A and B.

More at the link.

The Palestinian response? A thousand “no’s”.

Which was to be expected:

The original Israeli-Palestinian peace accord was signed by Israel and the PLO. The P.A. was created as a function of the 1993 agreement, a later agreement in 1994 and finally the 1995 interim agreement. These agreements are together known as the “Oslo Accords.”

In those agreements a number of issues were left to “permanent status negotiations,” including “Jerusalem, settlements, specified military locations, Palestinian refugees, borders, foreign relations and Israelis.”

Despite having agreed to negotiate on these subjects, over the last 25 years, on repeated occasions, the PLO/PA have made clear that while they were happy to assume the control and jurisdiction afforded to them by the accords, they had no intention whatsoever to negotiate any settlement regarding the other issues…

The PLO/PA stance on Jerusalem is unequivocal. According to them, Jerusalem, especially but not limited to the Temple Mount, is holy Islamic territory that no terrestrial body has the right to forfeit to non-Islamic rule…

Any peace deal that suggests leaving any part of Jerusalem, including but not limited to the Western Wall Plaza, under non-P.A./Islamic jurisdiction will be rejected…

According to the PLO/PA, any peace accord that does not ensure the dismantling of every “settlement,” including multiple neighborhoods in Jerusalem, and the expulsion of every Israeli from those areas…will be rejected…

In its definition of “Palestinian refugees,” UNRWA includes all descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, regardless of whether they have been granted citizenship elsewhere. Based on this definition, there are 5,545,540 Palestinian “refugees” registered with UNRWA.

When one includes the spouses and children of the female refugees (who inherited their refugee status from their fathers but cannot pass it down to their children unless they married a male Palestinian refugee), it is reasonable to assume that the PLO/PA is demanding that Israel agree to absorb a Palestinian refugee population comprising no fewer than 7.5 million people.

Needless to say, absorbing this number of Palestinians would fundamentally change Israel’s demographics—there are just over 6 million Jews in Israel today. The PLO/PA understand that the influx of these refugees would signal the end of the democratic Jewish state.

Any peace plan that requires the PLO/PA to compromise on the subject of the Palestinian refugees will be rejected.

There’s much much more at the link, but you get the idea.

In fact, you probably got the idea many years ago, as did I.

With Trump, though, the outline of any deal is usually just the tip of the iceberg. There is almost certainly other pressure being applied, although not necessarily directly to the Palestinians; perhaps to their all-important alllies.

And speaking of allies of the Palestinians:

“So many other countries are willing, ready and able to work with us. I’ve spoken to many of them. I cannot believe the amount of support this morning has,” President Trump said. “I have been called by leaders – Boris called – and they’re all saying whatever we can do to help, we all want to see it happen.”

The deal also found surprising backers in the Middle East, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates coming out in support. Turkey and Iran were among the leading opponents of the deal among the Muslim countries.

Actually, the backing of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Ara Emirates is not surprising at all; in recent years they have taken this stance. And with the election of Boris Johnson, Trump has a much stronger ally in Britain than before.

That said, I just don’t think this plan has a chance no matter what it says. What happened at Camp David two decades ago revealed for all to see that the Palestinians want nothing but the destruction of Israel and no concessions but that will ever be enough. As long as they are being supported in this holdout – and especially, as long as they are propped up financially by the UN and their other sponsors (although the US is no longer among those sponsors) – they will continue to say a thousand no’s. Perhaps they would even continue without that financial support, because the Palestinian leaders do not care about the well-being of their people.

But this is one of the things on which I’d like to be proven wrong.